As September strides in...

We're missing you and wish our collective school year well, from Glenbard, Lake Forest, Champagne, Pecatonica, as well as here in Prague.

For Emma, Katerina and I, we're almost two weeks in and flush with assignments and such. For the boys, school starts Tuesday at Jan Kepler Gymnasium and Petrin Sever Art School. We had a great final weekend with them and Babicka in Krkenose--a wonderful cap to an unforgettable summer.

I may be heading to Manila for a hastily announced workshop, so that further busies things for me. Classes have begun well, so that helps justify the long trip.

Here's a poem in the glow of the number of runners (add Emma) we have in our family:

            August in Beijing

Thank God the Lightning Bolt believes in you,

apparent less in ritualistic pointing to the sky

and more in popping up and to that Segway guy

who deigned to mow him down without a clue.

Thank Confucius guy on Segway isn’t going to die

of scandal, maybe, or of shame that through

the rolling post-haste seconds subject to review

exposes multi-tasking hubris and ineptitude. I

saw Usain had taken off his spikes and thought

‘it must be liberating to shed those very tools

that got me here’, silencing the likely din of fools

who’d just assume his wins were steroid-bought.

Thank Ras Tafari reason’s not outpaced by rules

when any tiger freely strides for what it ought;

our kids dream infinitely fast, and now they’ve got

Jamaican heat to challenge any course that cools.

Coda

The room waited,

            bated breath,

      for the verdict to come

down. Jem was certain that we’d won it;

            Reverend Sykes was none-

                  too-trumpish in tying ‘we’ to ‘won’.

      Instead, he hearkened to experience

and maybe tacitly to God,

            maker of Tom Robinson and Helen,

                  Jean Louise, Mayella,

                        Dolphus Raymond,

            Cal and Atticus—every soul in sight;

and maybe even Bob, good gawd!,

                  and certainly, using Jem’s

                        assurance, the

                              ghost in every

                                    room:

      {palpable as heartbeats on a pillow—Boo}

Then the jury woke Judge Taylor

                        Scout,

                  and all who slumber through

            an end-of-summer read.

      Tom assumes the walking dead,

                        the truer Boo that folks could say

                  they somewhat knew,

even in the pages now unglued.

      I’m with Jem in hoping,

            Sykes for standing up for

                  something, even little Dill as

                              stowaway;

            I’m amply thrown apart each time

                  I entertain a

mockingbird {fluting in my heart}

It's raining, as I write

In my busy reading this week (code for: I can't find the article source), recent droughts in Russia may have been a contributing factor in the run-up of Arab Spring. Russia, more than EU countries, supplied grain to North Africa at reasonable prices, but when Russia's supply dwindled, they stopped exporting and sold grain to themselves; average Africans were depleted of free-market access to bread and dysfunctional government rations, greasing the democratic (since dashed) hopes of many in the region to self-actualize and rely less on the policies of hegemonic 'providers'.

Some personal associations are close at hand: most recently, 'Feed My Starving Children' was a definite highlight of our trip to America this summer; my Model United Nations trip to Cairo, October 2010 happened naively just a couple months before 'Arab Spring' activism; a controversial symposium at Concordia College, c. 1987, had Garret Harding argue 'Lifeboat Ethics' and the rationale to let the sinking world sink (as Western well-intended motives only add weight to the individual and collective rafts of self-survival).

Returning to Prague's Vaclav Havel airport is always a joy, especially in the glow of good trips: God has blessed us with many good homes. I was astonished, however, with the brown landscape. A long-term colleague here remarked that 'our Garden of Eden is no longer', inviting evangelical opportunities! In context, those assuredly happen!

Below is a poem I'm still scraping out. It's naturally about global warming/climate change but not in any way reacting to political discussions that frankly defy educational respect. Pope Francis will speak to Congress next month and invariably address our negligent stewardship to the neighbors we least associate with and the earth we exploit. In ways, he is ahead of his times, but lagging behind the times we could/should figure out for ourselves, with the balance of the Bible and common sense (devoid of self-interested political pragmatism). In the spirit of a symposium--including disparaging voices like Garret Harding--we have to do better than how we're doing, pleasant people that we are.

            Apollo, let us run

The sun is reason, qua-Apollo, as myths go,

and while I worship nothing of his brother,

I run a hellcat from this ball of fire and dive

(in not-so-feline fashion) into a sea of other:

a spangling envelope of simulated shade,

a lake or stream that flows my way, or, times

being what they are, into a pool man-made,

anything in sight to ward off what we know:

we’re burning up. Agent Orange is too select

a nightmare to assign as déjà vu, yet now we

lie exposed—the lab betrays our intellect,

as those who’ve been at either business-end

of hellfire can attest: what is heard or seen

must now be felt, faint hopes to comprehend.

Of all phenomena (here let definition grow:

Husserl and others render what exists, what

comes as an event, what we are in that mix)

I love a gentle sun-shower: rain at root, if

not exempt from quick evaporating force. One

falls against the other’s lift and full predicts

our lean relief, yet still will make Apollo run.

the love of summer

You know me well enough to project love for autumn (Pushkin, cross-country, All-Saints' Day, school stretching out of its cocoon). Summer gives reunions, resplendent waters to swim and canoe, heat and due relief, sing-alongs and chances to feed my starving children. This was a summer to love and appreciate how our children are growing up in grace. I'm grateful beyond recount. Below is a quick sonnet--as ever, any revision suggestions or (better yet) matching efforts would be welcome.

Teleology

Young Rockers, try to begin ‘you better

you better, you bet’ or glimmer through ‘hope-

lessly in love with you’, primally scream

The Immigrant Song or groove with a pict

‘so this aint the end, I saw you again

today—I had to turn my heart away.’

Reset your waking dreams with ad-hoc drive

and launch a wily search for mother lode;

it’s out there in the instinct you behold,

and if you’re Yorke or Schulz or Waits (any

TDH), that’s icing on the sponge cake.

Worry not about mistakes, the ends do

justify the Jack White chords you mean to

play. Because you’re young, be dolphins all day.